The TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT

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December 20, 2012

Obelix goes to Belgium

by Adrian Tahourdin

Poor old Gérard. He’s been getting a
bad press over the past few days. I guess anyone who reads a newspaper will be
familiar with Depardieu’s dispute with the French government over his decision
to relocate to Belgium.

For anybody who is not: next year
François Hollande’s Socialist government will introduce its 75 per cent tax
rate for those earning more than €1million per year. Depardieu, unhappy at this prospect and a
declared supporter of Hollande’s predecessor Nicolas Sarkozy, has been engaged
in a slanging match with the prime minister Jean-Marc Ayrault, who described
the actor’s decision as “pathetic”. Depardieu published an open letter to
Ayrault in the widely circulated Journal du Dimanche, in which he offered to
hand in his passport.

Le Monde sent two of its reporters,
Florence Aubenas and Geoffroy Deffrennes, to the rue du Cherche-Midi in the sixth
arrondissement of Paris where Depardieu has a townhouse he is threatening to
sell and to the town of Néchin, just inside the Belgian border - and his new home, on the rue Reine-Astrid. The actor is prominent and popular in the rue du Cherche-Midi, owning two restaurants there, and on first-name terms with most
of the shop-owners. He’s even taken steps to keep chain-stores away.

Rue Reine-Astrid in Néchin looks
and sounds dreary. Even Google Street View can’t sex it up. The town
is surrounded by beet fields - it’s a “flat and dull landscape”. But quite a
number of French citizens live there and work in Lille, just over the border.

Has the strong French response to
Depardieu’s decision something to do with the fact that the actor has chosen
Belgium, traditionally the butt of all French jokes? It’s not a stylish move.
After all, the equally starry and hyper-French Alain Delon has lived in
Switzerland since 1999 and no one, I’m sure, has objected to that lifestyle
choice.

Depardieu is France’s most prolific male
star, with over 180 films to his name - from the early Les Valseuses (1974), to
the Asterix and Obelix series. Les Valseuses (which featured Depardieu and the late
Patrick Dewaere, above), directed by Bertrand Blier and also starring Jeanne
Moreau, is possibly one of the most politically incorrect films ever made.
I thought it was very funny when I saw it many years ago, but I can’t imagine
it has aged well.

On the same day as the Depardieu story,
Le Monde ran an editorial in which it ended up questioning the "symbolic brutality” of Hollande’s 75 per cent tax. (The paper had
of course supported him in the elections in May.) Even if Depardieu does hand
in his passport he’ll still be able to vote in France. It’s unlikely that he’ll
be backing Hollande.